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With the election nearly three months behind them, top aides to Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, let down their guard Saturday at a postmortem organized by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. In a candid back-and-forth, they shared behind-the-scenes recollections of how Brown coasted to reelection and trounced Kashkari, 60% to 40%. Neither candidate always listened to the aides. Brown suggested a whistle-stop train trip across California in his campaign for reelection. “We said that was a bad idea,” said Dana Williamson, the Democratic governor’s cabinet secretary. Kashkari ignored the advice of advisors...

Related "Karl Rove" Articles

With the election nearly three months behind them, top aides to Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, let down their guard Saturday at a postmortem organized by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
In a candid...

Senior Bush administration officials Sunday slammed the Senate study on the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation tactics and defended the techniques as necessary to get information from senior Al Qaeda operatives who had stopped talking to interrogators.
...

Amal Alamuddin -- strike that, Amal Clooney -- is Barbara Walters' most fascinating person for 2014.
Apparently because she landed George Clooney?
Also for some other stuff, sure, but really, it's the George Clooney thing.
In what we pray was a...

Facing a tough midterm election, Democrats put aside some of their remaining scruples about the new age of unlimited campaign spending and courted unions and hedge-fund billionaires for big checks to try to salvage a Senate majority.
They spent a lot...

The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a conservative political nonprofit group, wasn’t very busy before last year. It didn’t raise or spend a single dollar in all of 2012. When the year ended, it had just $904 in its bank account.
But its fortunes...

In a season of rough campaign attack ads, the one aimed at a North Carolina judge was among the roughest.
"Justice Robin Hudson sided with the predators," viewers were told. "Justice Robin Hudson — not tough on child molesters, not fair to...

In Kentucky's U.S. Senate race, crowded with attack ads from both sides, one group has spent millions praising Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as a friend of the state's coal industry and flaying his Democratic challenger for cashing checks from...

The local official introducing the candidate eventually got around to the point — Sen. Mark Begich, standing up for Alaskans, get out the vote — but first he lit into the Koch brothers and what he described as money's power to warp politics.
...

When 41-year-old gay rights lawyer Michelle Friedland was confirmed by the Senate in April to the federal bench in San Francisco, Democrats cheered that a liberal woman would become the youngest federal appeals court judge in the nation.
But when a...

John Haviland had two thoughts when he woke up Tuesday: One, it was election day, and he had to make time to vote. Two, thank God for the end of the political ad war.
“I’m just glad it’s over,” said Haviland, a Charlotte resident who voted for Democratic...

Voters in California once again elected Democrats to fill every statewide office -- even for contests in which party affiliation was largely irrelevant and the Republicans mounted strong campaigns -- deepening the Golden State's blue political hue.
And...

To the editor: Paraphrasing Harry Truman, slightly: The electorate put in place the next do-less-than-nothing Congress. ("Republicans seize control of U.S. Senate," Nov. 4)
With all the accolades being bestowed on incoming Senate Majority...

Three prominent Mexican film directors have called out their government on the issue of the 43 disappeared students, a San Diego architect takes on Sen. Ted Cruz and border policy and protesters hit the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Plus: There are plans...

She’s probably told her story thousands of times, but when we talk, Susan Burton’s tale comes spilling out of her as if it’s the first time she’s shared it: in and out of prison for years for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine, never offered drug...

Just over a month before the midterm election, control of the U.S. Senate remains surprisingly up for grabs as Democrats parlay a financial edge and other advantages to battle history and a strong anti-Obama tide.
Republicans still enjoy the more...

The disconnect between what Americans think of most provisions of Obamacare (love them!) and what they think of "Obamacare" (hate it!) has been the most perplexing aspect of rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
It's also the aspect most...